Gaia Marcus

@gaiamarcus.bsky.social

11230 Followers 2722 Following

- Director @adalovelaceinst.bsky.social:ensuring data & AI work for ppl & society - Stint in government - led #NationalDataStrategy; roles in Cabinet Office, ONS & MHCLG - Charity roles inc. Samaritans Trustee; staff @ The RSA, Centrepoint, ParkinsonsUK

Shannon Vallor's talk - ' The machine starts: taking stock of the AI and Robotics revolution '
Stat picture card - 89% of the UK public say it is important to regulate AI independently
Ada graph of sector regulation which shows how absent AI regulation is, compared to a range of other sectors Compared to the following: Aviation Financial Services Pharma Food Safety Foundation models/general-purpose Al lack regulation lack real coverage beyond voluntary standards across: Proactive risk monitoring Safety standards Independent standards Market entry authorisation Post-market monitoring Independent regulator Enforcement powers Accountability measures Transparency/reporting requirements Routes for redress
Social card - 89% of of the UK public believe Al products and services should not be rolled out until they are proven safe, even if this slows things down Source: A nationally representative online poll with 1,928 UK adults aged 18+ between 8-24 September 2025
Protester holding up 'citation needed' sign, likely at a protest. From https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archivo:%22Citation_needed%22.jpg
Vídeo from UK parliament select committee - Dame Chi Onwurah (the chair) asks: "One thing that is often said to [the Sci Tech Committee] is that Tesco’s Clubcard knows exactly what you are buying. You have Facebook. The public shares its data with private sector companies on an enormous scale." Gaia Marcus answers: "he public hold the public sector to a higher account because they do not have the ability to opt out ... If Tesco had an enormous data breach, I could decide to take my data away from the Clubcard system and maybe shop around. I do not have that luxury [with] public provision" ... especially if my access to public services - health, benefits, education - are in the balance.
On the panel: KeShaun Pearson (Memphis Community Against Pollution) will break down how Elon Musk’s xAI supercomputer is polluting the air of historically Black neighborhoods in Memphis, and how organizers are fighting back against yet another chapter of corporate extraction in their communities ​Marisol (No Desert Data Center) will share about their grassroots coalition’s recent win in Tucson to stop Amazon’s Project Blue data center proposal, which threatened the city’s scarce water supply, and how they’re organizing for future protections. ​KD Minor (Alliance for Affordable Energy) will demystify the energy impacts of data centers in Louisiana and share organizing strategies to mobilize community opposition to Big Tech and Big Oil infrastructure. ​Amba Kak (AI Now Institute) will talk us through the bigger picture: what’s behind Big Tech’s AI data center expansion, who stands to benefit from this boom, and what we sacrifice in return.
Strategy excerpt - what we have learnt Our strategy 2025-28 Data is increasingly used, collected and processed in ways that were previously unimaginable, for example, biometrios capabilities which evolved from verification, identification and categorisation systems to emerging systems on cognitive and biometric inference. This means that regulatory and governance regimes can fall out of step with practice on the ground. In many cases, there is not enough evidence to know whether or in which contexts Al and data-driven systems work as Intended. This is compounded by low levels of transparency and a lack of publicly available evaluations. Society and public services are often over-reliant on industry accounts of innovation and opportunity. People hold diverse and nuanced views about Al that are not always taken into account by governments, companies and other powerful actors. The tools that have historically emerged to allow people and communities to steer innovation-regulatory checks and balances, civil society and trade union mobilisation, and political leadership from elected representatives - are not always working well enough to protect people and society from the negative impacts of rapid technological change. New participatory mechanisms and deliberative approaches hold promise but require institutional backing and political buy-in to succeed. What we have learned Over the last seven years, Ada has established itself as a trusted, evidence-based institution. Independently funded and curious, we have sought diverse perspectives on data and Al and successfully brought together evidence and conversations from across civil society, academia, governments, the technology sector and the public. Our measured and balanced voice provides clarity and rigour in a landscape often dominated by hype, hope or fear. Our work exploring the intersection between Al, data, people and society has surfaced the following lessons: Al and data-driven technologies are 'sociotechn…
An image of the print version of https://tinyurl.com/2ut88e48
About the survey • Wave 2 of a tracker survey: How do people feel about Al? • Sample of 3,513 UK participants using random probability sampling • With overrepresentation of Black/Black British, Asian/Asian British, low income and low digital skills participants • Attitudes towards 8 different applications of Al, & governance and regulation of Al Facial recognition for policing Assessing eligibility for welfare benefits • Assessing risk of developing cancer from a scan Assessing risk of repaying a loan Driverless cars Robotic care assistants • Large language models Mental health chatbots
Slide that reads "what do diverse ppl in different areas think about the public good
Christmas print from Anthony Burrill reads *GIVE JOY! FEEL HOPE* centre-set in metallic green on a cream background. Ada Lovelace Institute logo in background
Extract from JRF article by Imogen Parker "Replacing existing consultation analysis with this Consult tool would save thousands of hours of work. However, this approach privileges quantitative over qualitative analysis, undermining the potential of finding a ‘golden nugget’ of data: a compelling quote or story that shifts thinking. It would also erode the experience of engaging with consultation material, dulling the cumulative impact of reading people’s stories in their voices. Sometimes ‘friction’ in a system can produce something positive, intimate, or tactile which gets erased through the pursuit of technological efficiency. Of course, it’s idealised to imagine those designing policy have free reign to be moved by individual responses in consultations. The reality is often a regimented coding process. But automating engaging with the material directly takes away one important aspect of a consultation, to offer publics a chance to be listened to. No one would argue that consultation fosters a perfect human relationship with a government decision-maker. It is, in part, an imperfect attempt at something relational. We should consider how automating such processes may change the willingness of the public to engage, and how they choose to do so, if they know their responses are to be analysed by a machine. We need to count the value given to existing human-to-human relationships."
Panel at 'No AI without women' featuring me, Asma Mhalla and Ysens de France Photo via Alexandra Alberti-Verdenne
Panel at 'No AI without women' event, featuring Dr Sasha Luccioni - AI & Climate lead at Hugging Face. Really baroque room and furnishings at the Elysée Palace!
This is a screen grab of the Ada Lovelace Institute newsletter, as it appears in my browser. For illustrative purposes, only. Individual newsletters will vary.
Closing Fireside Sir Demis Hassabis, Co-Founder & CEO, Google DeepMind In Conversation with Hannah Fry
Paul Hofheinz, President and Co-Founder, Lisbon Council, in conversation with: Asmeret Asefaw Berhe, Professor of Soil Biogeochemistry and Falasco Chair in Earth Sciences, University of California, Merced Fabian J. Theis, Director of the Institute of Computational Biology and Professor at TUM Mathematics & Life Sciences Bosun Tijani, Minister of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy, The Federal Republic of Nigeria
Image of a Hansard transcript of an intervention by The Minister for Policing, Fire and Crime Prevention (Dame Diana Johnson) Which reads "The Ada Lovelace Institute, an independent research institution with a mission to ensure that data and AI work for people and society, has written to the Home Secretary to express similar concerns to those of the right hon. Member. It believes that the only way to scale up those technologies safely and successfully is through the introduction of a statutory regulatory framework."